Sunday Inspiration

If you ride your horse try to feel the ground under your feet. Inhale and exhale trough your whole chest and stomag into the horse helps you and the horse relax. It also brings our center more down so we are one with the horse and not just floating above. This brings balance an stability. Horses are really sensitive to our breathing. And in case of unexpected movements if you are in ‘contact’ with the ground it will not knock you out of balance. If you practise this kind of awarenes you can use your breathing and awareness to communicate with your horse.

This takes more practise if you are used to giving big aids and if you mainly use your reins. Try to tune in to more subtile aids like breathing and your core, your horse will be relieved. If you give him the chance to react to smaller aids.

Good riding is all about being aware, experiment with this, if you are not working yet with this way of riding. In a safe enviroment.

Long reins and use your awareness. Breath in and think of going forward, get the attention from your posture (balance shift) and breathing first. And if the horse is strange to this you can then remind him by light leg aid to help him understand.

And for stopping breath out and think of halting and use your seat first to bring the balance backwards. Then use your reins if needed.

You will be amazed how subtile you can be. Bring your awareness to what you are doing and start always with the invisible aids first. Horses love this.

Let the horse be with you!

Esther

Spread the word, the horses deserve a better world and more understanding.

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5 thoughts on “Sunday Inspiration”

After years of riding dressage, I can say it’s super useful also to have an anatomy chart of a horse. See how your body sits atop those muscles, and how shifts in your posture and weight affect the signals you’re sending. Which you seem to understand as well 😉 Glad you’re educating your readers about these magnificent creatures!

Hey Bela, you rode dressage how nice. I am glad I am not the only one who are interested in these facets of riding. And talking about it. It can be really confusing for our horses if we are jot aware of our seat. And how small the changes are that influnence our horses. The general horse is so dull to the subtile use of the seat because simply it takes lots of concentration and practise and rider fitnes. And being bombarded with conflicting signals the horses learn not to take notion to it anymore. That is why I love to ride without reins lot of times, to check with the help of my horse what my seat is actually doing. That is a lovely way to practise body awareness when you are alone and no intstructor on the ground to help you. And this way you can practise riding from the seat. Karen Rholf for example integrates this in her DN approuche. She says that if you can ride your horse from your seat, only then you are ready to pick up the reins. And than when you pick up the reins you can really use them to feel what is out of balance. And the Acadenic art of riding, is also about the seat seat seat seat seat 😀 Bent Branderup is an excellent teacher, for remote learners as I am. CHEERS thanks for reading my blog!